1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a consumable unit and an image forming apparatus for controlling the consumable unit. More particularly, aspects of the present invention relate to a consumable unit having a non-recyclable memory and an image forming apparatus for controlling the consumable unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image forming apparatuses, such as facsimile machines, printers, copiers, or multi-function machines embodying the functions of the above-mentioned devices in a single device, provide printing functions. In order to perform printing, consumable units such as toner, photosensitive drums, developing devices or other units are required.
Consumable units need to be periodically or non-periodically replaced with new replacement units, because consumable units have a limited lifespan. Consumable units may have memories that store various types of information to maintain and manage the consumable units.
An image forming apparatus determines whether a consumable unit mounted on the image forming apparatus is genuine or not, based on the information stored in the memory of the mounted consumable unit. Additionally, the image forming apparatus continues to monitor the information stored in the memory of the consumable unit, to remind a user when it is time to replace the consumable units with a new consumable unit, or to control the image forming apparatus not to operate when the consumable unit is exhausted.
If a particular consumable unit is found to be exhausted, a user should replace the consumable unit with a new product. However, because of relatively higher costs of genuine products, users may be tempted to use low-priced non-genuine consumable units that are recycled from expired consumable units. Because conventional consumable units typically use electrically erasable programmable read only memories (EEPROMs) to store identification information and recycling information, it is not difficult for an ill-intentioned user to alter or duplicate the information stored in the memories so as to fool image forming apparatuses into accepting counterfeit or recycled consumables as genuine products.
Therefore, a conventional image forming apparatus may have difficulty in determining whether a recyclable consumable unit is genuine, or not, since the recyclable consumable unit may have memory information duplicated from a genuine consumable unit. The reuse of non-genuine memories may cause serious problems for the image forming apparatus and further reduce the lifespan of the image forming apparatus.